ARM Releases Top Cortex Design to Partners

ARM has an interesting history of releasing products. The company was once in the shadowy background of the CPU world, but with the explosion of mobile devices and its relevance in that market, ARM has had to adjust how it approaches the public with their technologies. For years ARM has announced products and technology, only to see it ship one to two years down the line. It seems that with the increased competition in the marketplace from Apple, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm ARM is now pushing to license out its new IP in a way that will enable their partners to achieve a faster time to market.

The big news this time is the introduction of the Cortex A72. This is a brand new design that will be based on the ARMv8-A instruction set. This is a 64 bit capable processor that is also backwards compatible with 32 bit applications programmed for ARMv7 based processors. ARM does not go into great detail about the product other than it is significantly faster than the previous Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A57.

The previous Cortex-A15 processors were announced several years back and made their first introduction in late 2013/early 2014. These were still 32 bit processors and while they had good performance for the time, they did not stack up well against the latest A8 SOCs from Apple. The A53 and A57 designs were also announced around two years ago. These are the first 64 bit designs from ARM and were meant to compete with the latest custom designs from Apple and Qualcomm’s upcoming 64 bit part. We are only now just seeing these parts make it into production, and even Qualcomm has licensed the A53 and A57 designs to insure a faster time to market for this latest batch of next-generation mobile devices.

We can look back over the past five years and see that ARM is moving forward in announcing their parts and then having their partners ship them within a much shorter timespan than we were used to seeing. ARM is hoping to accelerate the introduction of its new parts within the next year.

Introduction

Well here we are again with this Samsung 840 EVO slow down issue cropping up here, there, and everywhere. The story for this one is so long and convoluted that I’m just going to kick this piece off with a walk through of what was happening with this particular SSD, and what was attempted so far to fix it:

The Samsung 840 EVO is a consumer-focused TLC SSD. Normally TLC SSDs suffer from reduced write speeds when compared to their MLC counterparts, as writing operations take longer for TLC than for MLC (SLC is even faster). Samsung introduced a novel way of speeding things up with their TurboWrite caching method, which adds a fast SLC buffer alongside the slower flash. This buffer is several GB in size, and helps the 840 EVO maintain fast write speeds in most typical usage scenarios, but the issue with the 840 EVO is not its write speed – the problem is read speed. Initial reviews did not catch this issue as it only impacted data that had been stagnant for a period of roughly 6-8 weeks. As files aged their read speeds were reduced, starting from the speedy (and expected) 500 MB/sec and ultimately reaching a worst case speed of 50-100 MB/sec:

There were other variables that impacted the end result, which further complicated the flurry of reports coming in from seemingly everywhere. The slow speeds turned out to be the result of the SSD controller working extra hard to apply error correction to the data coming in from flash that was (reportedly) miscalibrated at the factory. This miscalibration caused the EVO to incorrectly adapt to cell voltage drifts over time (an effect that occurs in all flash-based storage – TLC being the most sensitive). Ambient temperature could even impact the slower read speeds as the controller was working outside of its expected load envelope and thermally throttled itself when faced with bulk amounts of error correction.

Once the community reached sufficient critical mass to get Samsung’s attention, they issued a few statements and ultimately pushed out a combination firmware and tool to fix EVO’s that were seeing this issue. The 840 EVO Performance Restoration Tool was released just under two months after the original thread on the Overclock.net forums was started. Despite a quick update a few weeks later, that was not a bad turnaround considering Intel took three months to correct a firmware issue of one of their own early SSDs. While the Intel patch restored full performance to their X25-M, the Samsung update does not appear to be faring so well now that users have logged a few additional months after applying their fix.

In the fall it was confirmed by Samsung that stale data on some 840 EVO drives would suffer performance degradation and released a tool to mitigate the issue which Al reviewed here. The Tech Report recently heard of some cases of drives slowing even with the new EXT0CB6Q firmware installed and decided to investigate. They took a 840 EVO 250GB SSD which had been filled with files to test the patch and was then left forgotten on a shelf for several months and tested the speeds. The benchmarks showed an average speed between 35-54MB/s far below what you would expect to see from an SSD but in line with what users have been reported. On the other hand another 840 EVO which has been in constant use since the firmware update shows no signs whatsoever of slowing down, though NTFS compression was recently used on the drive which could have refreshed the flash. Obviously more testing needs to be done, keep your eyes out for updates on this new development.

"In October, Samsung patched its 840 EVO SSD to address a problem that caused slow read speeds with old data. Recent reports suggest the issue isn't completely fixed, and the results of our own testing agree."

Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

Introduction:

Today Samsung has lifted the review embargo on their new Portable SSD T1. This represents Samsung's first portable SSD, and aims to serve as another way to make their super speedy VNAND available. We first saw the Samsung T1 at CES, and I've been evaluating the performance if this little drive for the past week:

We'll dive more into the details as this review progresses.

Specifications:

Packaging:

The T1 comes well packaged, with a small instruction manual and a flat style short USB 3.0 cable. The drive itself is very light - ours weighed in right at 1 ounce.

I was invited to a meeting with Samsung on my last day at CES. The Samsung Pavilion was absolutely packed, but I was able to see a handful of products that should pique the interest of people that are passionate about their monitor technology. I was led around by Sara and we checked out not only a few monitors, but the latest ATIV PC products.

Up until this point, I thought curved TVs were a gimmick. I still think curved TVs are a gimmick. For a living room seating multiple people that will have a different angle to the TV, I believe a flat screen is still the best overall experience. When it comes to PC usage, my mind has been thoroughly changed.

Samsung has forged ahead with a curved 21:9 panel that they give the very unwieldy product name of S34E790C. This is a 34” VA based panel that features a resolution of 3440x1440. This is not quite 4K resolution, and of course it features the ultra-wide 21:9 aspect ratio. This means that it is a bit easier on a video card than a full 4K monitor. This is simply a stunning looking unit. The design features a thin bezel and a really solid looking base that adds to the aesthetic rather than detracts. The rear ports include two HDMI, DisplayPort 1.2, 3.5 mm audio output, power, and a 4 port USB 3.0 hub.

The base is a solid, curved unit that allows users to raise and lower the panel. The bezels are again relatively thing so that multiple monitors can be placed together without the bezels becoming distracting. The unit also features a 100x100 mm VESA mount so that other stands can be used with this monitor.

Three of these monitors together would make for a tremendous Surround or Eyefinity setup. There would have to be some serious horsepower in terms of graphics to push that many pixels though. The curve is not extreme in the least, and the monitors curve around the user in a subtle way. This would be outstanding for flight sims, racing, and pretty much any game that can utilize a wide FOV. Samsung showed five of these together, and they blend nearly seamlessly together. This monitor currently retails around $1400, but MSRP is supposed to be $1,199 US.

On the professional side they were showing the UD970. This monitor was released around mid-year in 2014, but they were happy to put it on exhibit at CES. This is a 3840x2160 (4K) monitor that is aimed directly at professionals with color calibration done at the factory. When this comes out of the box, it should be in good enough shape to start working directly on professional applications which require a nicely calibrated monitor. This monitor is the typical flat style rather than the curved unit described above.

The ATIVs

Away from the monitors Samsung was showing off their latest all-in-one. The ATIV One 7 Curved is a 27” AIO that features the latest Intel i5 processor (Broadwell) with the HD 5500 graphics option. It has 8 GB of memory and a 1 TB hybrid HD (flash and spinning 5400 RPM drive) and runs Windows 8.1. The screen is a 1080P unit, which is a little disappointing considering the availability of fairly affordable 1440P panels, but that extra cost would drive up price from the very reasonable $1,299 MSRP.

The machine seemed very snappy and the curved screen again seems very appropriate for PC usage. Since the user is fairly close, the curve does allow better use of peripheral vision. The unit is only about 1.5” deep, so we can see exactly why they are using a Broadwell based chip which does not require a tremendous amount of cooling. It features HDMI in and out ports for use with consoles and other display options. There are also two 10 watt speakers integrated into the machine which will provide for some pretty impressive integrated sound. Most speakers in this class are around 2 to 4 watts, so by putting in a couple of 10 watt units there will not be a need by most people to utilize other speaker peripherals.

Probably the most interesting aspect of this product is the SideSync 3.0 software platform. This application allows users to control their Samsung based Android device. The demonstration I was given used the Galaxy S5. The user will see a representation of the phone on their screen and they have access to all of the applications installed on the phone. Here is what Samsung has to say about SideSync 3.0:

“Through SideSync 3.0, ATIV One 7 Curved users can receive phone calls and text messages forwarded from their Samsung smartphone right to their PC. Users can also control their smartphone from their PC screen, mouse and keyboard through SideSync 3.0’s sharing mode, as well as share content between devices with Samsung Link 2.0. This means that users can save all of their photos, videos, music and more in the ATIV One 7 Curved’s ample 1TB flash drive, and then easily access it from other devices from anywhere in the home.”

The demonstration was actually pretty slick and it is useful. It was really funny to see the cursor go from the screen and over to the smartphone and be able to click on the programs icons.

The final product shown to me was the ATIV Book 9. This is a 12.2” laptop that weighs in at a pretty light 2.09 lbs. It has a very dense screen that is 2560x1600. Samsung is bringing back the 16:10 aspect ratio as they found it more useful for productivity work on this particular laptop. The laptop features the new Broadwell based Intel Core M 5Y70 processor with 8 GB of RAM, a 256 GB SSD, and around 10.5 hours of battery life. This particular configuration goes for around $1,400 US when it is released this quarter.

This probably would have been a much more impressive looking laptop if I had not seen the Dell XPS 13 with an edge to edge display. That model is around 11” wide and weighs slightly more at 2.6 pounds (2.8 pounds with the touchscreen version). Still, the ATIV Book 9 is an impressive performer with its 2560x1600 screen and half pound less weight.

After all is said and done, I really want 3 x S34E790Cs. Now if I can only get more desk space and a couple graphics cards that can push that resolution.

We covered some other Storage Visions sightings in a prior post, so now that a bit of the CES dust is settling down, here's the rest of what was cool to see at Storage Visions:

We'll start off with the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro Plus, seen here with a pair of OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSDs installed. This is a PCIe to 4-channel SATA HBA. The controller does not appear to employ RAID, leaving that functionality up to the host system OS. Two 2.5" SATA devices can be mounted directly to the PCB, and an additional two SATA channels are available through the rear panel eSATA ports. This card is marketed primarily as a storage expander for Mac products, and can be connected to a Mac Pro via a Thunderbolt-to-PCIe card expander.

Here is an ASUS Copper, which bridges M.2 (enclosed within a 2.5" housing) to a SATA Express link. This may be handy for current generation PCIe 2.0 x2 M2 devices, but with PCIe 2.0 x4 and 3.0 x4 SSDs on the horizon, a SATA Express device of this type will rather quickly become a throughput bottleneck.

Various recent enterprise SSDs. Bottom left is our first sighting of a P3500, sitting next to a Micron P420M, which is just below a Micron M500DC. The right side is all Samsung, and includes an XS1715, which is not SATA, but PCIe/NVMe via an SFF-8639 connector. There are a few M.2 units in the center, and what appears to be another 1715 HHHL unit (PCIe/NVMe) at the bottom right.

That wraps up the Storage Visions goodies. Stand by for more storage related posts as we comb through all of the press releases and photos from the meetings we attended earlier this week.

These are essentially 850 EVO's in very small portable packaging. They support USB 3.0 speeds as well as UASP, so random IO performance should be very respectable. We have not tested it ourselves, but something on the order of 8,000 4k random IOPS should be achievable.

Claimed speeds are up to 450 MB/sec, likely limited by the 5Gb/sec USB 3.0 interface being used. 256 bit hardware-based AES is also included, with the drive unlockable by the use of a small software app that is embedded on the drive. The included cable is impressively thin considering it is a full USB 3.0 spec cable. The release states the lowest capacity 250GB model will sell for $180. Based on other data we have, the 500GB and 1TB capacities should sell for ~$350 and $650, respectively. We will review the T1 just as soon as we get back from CES later this week.

Today AMD announced that they will be shipping 7 new Freesync displays in 2015 with their partners, BenQ, LG Electronics, Nixeus, Samsung, and Viewsonic.

As we learn more about these individual FreeSync-enabled models we will provide updates, and AMD has stated that there will be models shipping this month.

The full PR announcement from AMD appears below:

AMD today announced the expansion of the FreeSync ecosystem as technology partners including BenQ, LG Electronics, Nixeus, Samsung, and Viewsonic showcased their upcoming commercially available FreeSync-enabled displays at the 2015 International CES. The unveiling of new FreeSync-enabled displays demonstrates the industry's commitment to open standards-based technology that enables improved gaming by synchronizing dynamic refresh rates of the displays to the frame rate of AMD Radeon™ R-Series graphics cards and current generation APUs. The result greatly reduces input latency and helps reduce or eliminate visual defects during gaming and video playback. The new displays range in size between 24" to 34", supporting refresh rates of 30 to 144 Hz, and resolutions of 1080p up to Ultra HD, offering a variety of options for every gamer's needs and at virtually every price point.

"The broad adoption of FreeSync technology from our partners shows how the industry strongly values the same open ecosystem and quality that AMD strives for," said Roy Taylor, corporate vice president, ISV/IHV Partner Group, AMD. "Gamers who use FreeSync technology with AMD Radeon™ R-Series graphics and AMD latest generation of APUs can rest assured that they're enjoying the best possible experience."

Monitors from BenQ, LG Electronics, Nixeus, and Samsung are on display at AMD's booth, San Polo rooms 3402 - 3404 at The Venetian at CES Tech West. Displays are expected to be available in market starting this month with additional models set to launch in early 2015.